As
I read through this Nerve VoiceBox, I felt some uneasiness. Perhaps my familiarity with
the work of the authors and the fact that the questions were somewhat focused on history
were at odds with my experience at the United Nations where governments, including the
Vatican, are to this day still debating sexual and reproductive health rights, the value and
dignity of women, and adolescent sexuality — and coming up with the same old damaging
answers.
What about the fourteen women I met with in the slums of Santiago, Chile, each of
whom told me all of their children were conceived in marital rape? Or the twenty or so anti-sex,
so-called pro-lifers who converged last week on a SIECUS panel at the United Nations,
priest in tow; in response to the assertion that one value of sexuality was honesty, the priest,
red-faced and angry, demanded to know what studies showed that honesty was an ethical
norm!
At this point, affecting real change here and now is as important as understanding
the past. Why are so many Catholics, indeed so many Christians, so silent in the face of
continued harmful sexual teachings? Why has no one articulated a truly open and honest
alternative vision of a sexual ethic that serves people?
Camille's atheism aside, what does God care about when it comes to sexuality?
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